


Questions Asked

by nymja



Series: The Sad Grandpa Trilogy [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Force!Ghost Anakin, Gen, Rey Kenobi Theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 11:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5742760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I made this for you,” she says, hesitantly holding up the creation formed from an old flight suit. “Because you’re a pilot.”</p><p>Her imaginary friend stares down at the doll, his face invisible underneath the black hood of his robe. “<i>…Thank you.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Questions Asked

**Author's Note:**

> For those who wanted a follow-up to Lessons Learned! Thank you :D 
> 
> Part of The Sad Grandpa Trilogy, but can be read as a standalone

Rey has an imaginary friend.

She doesn’t know when she first dreamed him up, but one night it’s horribly cold and she’s shivering, body curled up into a small ball. Trying to get warm enough to fall asleep underneath the hardly protective canopy Bobbajo left up for his happabores.

She’s seven.

“ _What’re you doing out here_?” Comes a voice she’s never heard before.

Rey doesn’t look up, burying her head deeper into the folds of her arm, tucking her knees in closer to her chest. “T-trying to sleep.”

“ _Outside_? _Don’t you have a house?_ ”

“No.”

The voice sounds annoyed on her behalf. “ _But even_ slaves _have houses to sleep in.”_

“I’m n-not a slave.”

“ _You’re not?_ ”

“No.”

“ _What are you then?”_

“I dunno.”

There’s a pause, and when Rey looks up next she notices the blue outline of feet. They’re small, only a little bigger than her own. She tilts her head back further to see a boy, nearly transparent and _glowing._ Rey’s eyes widen, but for some reason she can’t explain, she knows that this is alright. That there’s no reason to be afraid.

“ _Well, you know what I think you are?”_

She manages to shake her head.

 _“_ I _think you’re a_ person,” the boy says. His smile is wide, and he crouches down next to her. Close but not touching.

Rey somehow manages to smile back. “Is that what you are?”

The boy rolls his eyes. “ _Duh.”_ He sits beside her. “ _So how come you can’t sleep?”_

“It’s too cold.”

“ _Is that all?”_

She slowly shakes her head.

“ _What else?”_

Rey ducks her face down again, nervous. “I get scared.”

_“What’re you scared of?”_

“Being alone.”

The boy nods, as if he understands. With a shy grin, he scoots closer to her. “ _Then I’ll keep you company, okay?”_

“…okay.”

It’s still dark, it’s still cold, but eventually she manages to drift off into sleep with the knowledge that she’s no longer by herself.

\--

She likes her new friend. He comes with her, when she starts going through the bigger ships, keeping her company as she strips things for parts. Sometimes they make it into games—who can find the coolest pieces the fastest, who can climb to the taller parts of the wreckage first. She likes doing this a lot more when there’s someone to talk to—even if she can only hear her own voice echoing back when they decide to yell into the empty hulks of the ships.

One morning starts the same as any other. Except her friend looks different. He’s taller, wearing robes that look better kept. And he’s got a funny-looking braid, too, going over his shoulder.

But Rey knows it’s still him. She doesn’t forget her friends. Even if he’s the first one she’s got.

“Why are you big?” She asks, as she uses a multi-tool to start prying out a navcom from the side of a downed X-Wing.

“ _I’m not big,”_ he says, lips pulling up into a smirk. “ _You’re just still small._ ”

“I am not!” Rey tugs at the edge of the navcom, but it doesn’t budge.                                         

“ _Try prying out the frame.”_ He suggests, kneeling next to her.

Rey shoots him a suspicious look, before she sighs and attempts it. The navcom slides loose and she smiles wide.

“Thank you!”

He looks somewhat uncomfortable at the statement. “ _…Don’t mention it.”_

“You’ll never guess what I found yesterday,” she starts, pulling the bulky system onto the sled she made out of a ship’s door.

“ _More junk?”_

“Better!” She secures a netting on top of the parts, getting them ready to take back to Unkar. “I think it’s a flight simulator.”

“ _You’ll have to show me sometime. You know, I’m a pilot.”_

She sits on the sled, making room on it for her friend even though she knows he can’t sit. “Why do you think I told you?”

Rey pushes off, sliding down the dune. Normally, her friend would cheer for her on the way down. Instead, today, he’s there waiting for her at the bottom, his lips slightly pursed.

“ _I hate sand._ ”

“Well,” Rey manages diplomatically, as she hops off her sled and starts dragging it behind her. “No one _likes_ it.”

\--

It’s a few more days before she sees her friend again. He’s different, this time too. Rey wanders into her AT-AT (she found it a week ago, and he’s been showing her how to make traps for the hatch), and sees him standing there. But there’s something different about him. For one, she can barely see him—his body is covered from head to toe in a hooded black robe.

Still, she makes her way to the small cubby she keeps her Important Things in. She looks at the present, biting down on her lip. What if he doesn’t like it?

Rey holds it close to her chest and turns to face him.

“I made this for you,” she says, hesitantly holding up the creation she made out of an old flight suit. “Because you’re a pilot.”

Her imaginary friend stares down at the doll, his face invisible underneath the black hood of his robe. “… _Thank you.”_

“It’s a girl, though,” she asserts with deadly seriousness.

There’s a long, strained silence. Rey slowly starts to bring the doll back down to her. He doesn’t like it.

“ _Of course,”_ he finally says. She doesn’t know why he sounds sad.

“You don’t have to keep it!” She blurts.

“ _Why don’t…”_ His hands bunch into fists. She also doesn’t understand why her friend is different today, but she doesn’t like it. “ _Why don’t you keep it for me?”_

She bites down again on her lip, looking at the ground. “It’s for you, though,” she mumbles.

“ _It’ll be safer in your hands.”_

“Okay,” Rey whispers.

“ _I…I don’t mean to scare you.”_

“You’re not!”

“ _I should.”_

“Why would you scare me?”

Her friend turns, and in that movement his hood falls down to his shoulders. His hair is longer, curly. There’s a scar cutting through his eyebrow.

His eyes glow yellow. And there’s horrible, terrible burns eating away at his face. Charred, blackened skin.

The doll drops from Rey’s hands, her eyes well with tears.

And then he’s gone.

\--

She feels really bad for crying. For making him leave. So she swaps part of her dinner portion to Tira Dane for flowers. They’re a little brown, but still nice. She does her best to make them look pretty, and places them in a jar in the middle of her table.

She changes them out every week, just in case he comes back. So he knows she’s sorry, and that she didn’t mean to scare him.

\--

She changes them out 281 times.

\--

Rey is twelve, already an adult, when she sees him again. She’s in the middle of trying out the flight simulator, swerving it around and cheering when she passes one of the modules.

“ _Hey, you did it!”_ The boy says, standing by her elbow.

Her heart speeds up, and Rey turns to her side. “You’re back!” She says, smile breaking out onto her face.

“ _I didn’t go anywhere. Not really.”_ He points at the screen which gives the read out, “ _That’s pretty good, I can go that fast with my podracer.”_

Her eyes widen. “Podracing?”

“ _Yeah! I’m the only human that can do it, you know.”_

Rey shakes her head. It sounds…dangerous. And expensive. She’s salvaged a few podracers herself. She keeps her lucky helmet on, but steps out of the simulator. Quickly, and a little nervously, she gestures to the flowers. “I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

The boy frown. “ _What for?_ ”

“For…” she looks away. “For crying. When you were hurt.”

“ _Oh, that.”_ The boy looks at the flowers and smiles. “ _They’re really pretty._ ”

“Do you like them?”

“ _Yeah, no one’s ever given me flowers before. Not even my mom._ ”

Her eyes widen. “You have a family?”

“ _My mom. She was the best—“_ the boy’s face screws up in concentration, as if he’s just noticed something. “ _Rey…where’s your family?”_

“Gone,” her voice picks up, defensive, “But they’ll be back!”

“ _Is that why you have all the lines on your wall?”_

“Yes.”

“ _That’s a long time.”_

“…’s not that long,” she mutters.

“ _Do you think they miss you?”_

Rey swallows. “I hope so.”

Her friend nods, walking so he can stand closer to the flowers.

 _“_ I’d _miss you.”_

She rubs the back of her hand across her eyes.

\--

The days fall into a pattern: she gets up, works on building her speeder, and heads out before the sun’s too high in the sky. Her time is spent in the hollowed out caverns of Imperial Destroyers, taking what she can find back to the Niima Outpost. Sometimes her friend is there. And he helps her, showing her how to take out parts from the ships she doesn’t recognize. One night, when she’s nursing a split lip because someone wanted her compressor, he decides to teach her how to fight.

Most importantly, he keeps her company. On nights when she’s all alone, Rey imagines he’s there. That she has someone to talk to, even if there’s no answers.

And somewhere, between the slips of days, Rey grows up.

\--

She sees that version of him the night before everything changes. He’s sitting, looking at the flowers she still replaces. His face is covered by the hood once more, and she notices that one of his arms is mechanical, resting on the table.

“Hello,” she starts, sinking into the seat across from him.

He says nothing.

Uncertain about what else to do, Rey starts dinner. She bites off the plastic of her portion, putting it into a bowl. She mixes the polystarch with her finger. She chews with her mouth open.

When her friend, who is not exactly the same as her friend, speaks, she nearly misses it.

“ _You’re alone.”_

Rey swallows her vegmeal. She looks at the man, in his black robe and covered face. “I…I think you are, too.”

He’s silent.

She takes another bite of food. And another. Each piece like navigating a minefield. It’s not that this version of her friend scares her. But he is so unlike the other two. Quiet. Sad. Angry. It’s hard to reconcile this man in black to the boy with a dimpled smile or the cocky teenager with a strange haircut.

“ _You’re a lot like him.”_

“Like who?”

His shoulders hunch. _“Things are going to change for you, Rey.”_

“Why?”

“ _Because it’s time for you to wake up.”_

She frowns, reluctantly setting down the polystarch. She knows, somehow, that what he’s talking about has nothing to do with sleeping.

“Wake up _where_?”

He turns, and the hood gaps out enough for her to see his yellow eyes, the burns on his cheek. “ _Remember the Force, Rey. Remember...Remember what I can be.”_

“I don’t understand-“

Once again, he’s gone.

\--

The next day, Rey rescues a BB-8 unit. And things move quickly from there.

\--

She’s in the snow, the cold of it sinking into her clothes and skin. Only a few feet away from her, Finn lays on his stomach, his back a smoking wound. She’s afraid. Not of Kylo Ren, exactly, but of what could happen. Of what it would mean to lose the only friend she’s made in a long time because she can’t protect him.

 _What do I do?_ She pleads, body aching.

She doesn’t see him, but she hears him. Not young, or old. It’s both at the same time.

_You stand back up, Rey._

Her arms shake with stress, but she presses her palms flat against the snow until she can get back to her feet. She makes out Kylo Ren, arm outstretched, trying to summon the lightsaber.

 _Call it._ Comes the voice of her friend when he is burned.  
_It’s yours._ Says the one with the strange braid.  
_We won’t leave you!_ Promises the boy.

Rey takes a breath, stands up tall, and extends her arm.

\--

The night before she leaves to find Luke, she wakes. It’s the dead of night, with most of the Resistance personnel already gone to bed. She pushes the blankets off of her legs, wrapping one of the extra ones around her shoulders (she still can’t sleep when she’s cold) and makes her way down the hall. Rey’s bare feet cross almost silently, as she exits the base and finds the open air.

He’s there, waiting for her. His black hood resting around his shoulders. The burned skin of his face and the yellow of his eyes doesn’t frighten her the way that it used to, not anymore. Her friend is looking up at the stars.

She tightens her grip on the blanket. Rey runs over her words like a diagnostic, finally settling on the two that seem the most appropriate. “Thank you.”

He turns to her, and his head tilts in a way that reminds her of when he is a boy. “ _For what_?”

“Helping me. Against Kylo Ren.”

He looks down at the ground. “ _I owed someone a favor.”_

She blinks. “Is that the only reason?”

Her friend hesitates, before slowly shaking his head.

Rey takes a few steps closer, until she is leaning against the same cargo container he is. She looks up at the same spot in the sky. She’s not sure why he seems so sad, but this is the version of her friend she understands the least and therefore she wants to try and figure him out.

“I used to look at these all the time, you know.” She juts her chin up at the stars. “I used to watch them, hoping they’d become engine lights.”

 _“I know,”_ he says softly.

“I thought, maybe, one day they’d bring my family. That I’d get to see the ship that flew away come back.”

“ _Do you still want to wait?_ ”

“…no, I don’t think so.” She closes her eyes. “Is that wrong of me, do you think? To want to start going forward?”

He is quiet for a very long time, his hands folded into the sleeves of his robes. Rey tries to picture him as a different man—one healed and whole.

 _“No, I don’t think it’s wrong.”_ His lips form a small, distant grin. “ _No one should have to stay in the past._ ”

She bites lightly on the inside of her cheek, not sure why his statement is making her eyes burn. Once again, she rubs them with the back of her hand.

“ _Rey._ ”

“Yes?”

Her friend takes his time, mulling over his words. “ _Ben is…”_ He hunches forward, features once again obscured. _“He is at a crossroads. So are you.”_

“Ben? You mean Kylo Ren?”

“ _Named after my old master, my…friend.”_

She falls quiet, waiting. Rey has always been so very good at that.

“ _Remember to listen, Rey._ ”

She blinks. “To what?”

“ _Everything._ ” He sounds so pained, and she’s unable to do anything about it. “ _To your teacher. To your friends. To those you love._ Listen _to them, Rey. Please.”_

She digs her fingers tighter into her blanket. Above them, a meteor dives across the sky.

“…I will.”

\--

When she finds Luke, she doesn’t see him anymore. But he’s there—she knows he’s there. In the tides, in the moss growing between the stones of the ruins, in the way that Luke smiles when she does something right and sighs when she does it wrong.

With Luke, she trains.  
With Luke, she does her best to listen.

\--

The time eventually comes for her to leave the island. And when she does, they meet again. Her and Kylo Ren. It’s not surprising. Nor is it something she’s going to run away from.

It’s different than before. While she still grieves for the people she’s lost, she lets it strengthen her resolve. She remembers Finn, the desire to _protect._ She remembers the calls and whispers of her friends, as she extended her hand for the lightsaber which did not, in earnest, belong to her.

Kylo Ren, however, is much the same. She feels his pain like a burn, the chaos of the Force that surrounds him fills the air like static. His anger, his fear, they overpower nearly every part of him.

She doesn’t feel afraid when she ignites her weapon, when the twin blue blades emerge from the staff. Her hear is calm and still in her chest, there is nothing but the Force. He is nothing but Ben.

They fight. She isn’t Rey when they do—she surrenders herself to the Force, becomes its weapon. Her arms and legs move in a fluid, detached sort of grace, her body on autopilot, her mind clear as it can be of anger.

In a moment of advantage, she takes his leg.

He screams, sinking down onto the other one and dropping his lightsaber. Rey’s breath catches, as she raises her lightsaber to his chest.

Kylo Ren lies on the ground before her, unmasked. His leg smoldering at the knee as he grips it in pain. He is looking up at her, his mouth morphed into a snarl and his brows drawn tightly down.

“Finish it, then!” He screams at her, leaning forward closer to her blade.

Her hands tremble. It would be so easy, to end the pain that he’s caused. To stop things, here and now. Keep him from going back to the First Order, prevent him from hurting Luke and Leia and all the other people she cares about.

Rey exhales. His dark eyes meet hers, pleading for something and it strikes her when she realizes where she has seen the expression before. And _his_ words return to her, a haunting mantra:

_Remember what I can be._

She looks up, past Kylo Ren, and sees two figures. One, the boy she knows almost as well as she knows herself. The other…

A man in black. Wearing a different mask.  
The spectre of Darth Vader says nothing. Its black, glassy eyes only stare straight at her. Waiting.

Then, she feels fear.

_He is at a crossroads. So are you._

Rey takes a slow step backwards. Kylo Ren slumps forward, unconscious. The tip of her blade burns a shallow groove down his chest before he hits the ground.

She takes a few more steps back, before she turns and runs as fast as she can back to her shuttle.

_You’re a lot like him._

Rey preps for flight, and doesn’t look back.

\--

She’s by herself when she sees him again. She’s in her temporary quarters, having just talked to Leia about what had happened to …

“ _Are you okay?_ ” He asks, walking up to her. She doesn’t know when the boy version of him started seeming so young.

Rey rubs her hands over her arms. “Yeah. I’m alright.”

“ _You don’t sound alright.”_ Her friend sits down next to her on the bed. “ _Do you feel bad about Ben?”_

“I…I don’t know.”

“That’s _what’s making you feel bad, huh?”_

“I think so.”

In a flicker, he’s no longer a boy, but a teenager. With a silly braid and an absence where his customary grin should go. “ _You spared him. That’s the Code. What a Jedi_ should _do.”_

“I left him for dead,” she argues with a whisper. “And I would’ve killed him. If I didn’t see-“

“ _Vader.”_ Says the dark one, hood over his head.

“Yes.”

_“Did he frighten you?”_

She looks at the ground. “Yes.”

Her friend becomes a boy again, kicking his feet out absently. “ _He scares me, too.”_

“Did I…Did I do the right thing? Leaving him there. Should I have-?”

The boy becomes the dark one again. “ _I’m not the one to ask.”_

“But what do you think?”

His eyes close, shuttering out the yellow light. “ _I think that was only one decision. There will be more.”_

Rey swallows. “If it was the right thing to do…I wouldn’t feel this awful, would I?”

The hooded man folds his arms over his chest. “ _In the end, we only have our choices.”_

She closes her eyes.

“ _Keep listening, Rey. Keep questioning. And I’ll be here.”_

“Promise?”

Rey looks up, and the teenager smiles.

“ _Of course. What else are friends for?”_


End file.
